“Can everyone please turn their cameras on so I can see your smiling faces?” 
Sitting on my couch in a polo shirt and sweatpants, I was positively beaming ear to ear. I brewed the steaming cup of coffee in my hand approximately 5 minutes before class started and 5 minutes after I woke up. I was used to being at the anxiety-inducing whim of showering, making lunch, getting dressed, eating breakfast, and commuting to school, all before seven A.M. For the first time in my long educational career, I felt that mornings were relaxed, and my brain was ready to learn at its own pace and schedule. I slept more, felt less stress, and freed up time otherwise spent on prepping for in-person classes. The benefits seemed endless, especially from the comfortable vantage point of my couch-turned-classroom.
As each morning of teachers asking that fateful question passed, however, my smile seemed to taper into a half-smile, then a wince, then a grimace. I turned my camera on, only to find that online classes are almost like being zapped by a Men In Black light. Twenty minutes into the Zoom lecture, I awoke to find I had been staring at the wall of my apartment and remembered nothing about the psychological models my professor eloquently explained. The bright-white glow of my screen etched into my corneas so that each time I blinked I saw fifteen boxes with fuzzy faces. Class ended and I proceeded to lay on the couch feeling exhausted, anxious, and confused about what I had just learned.
For some schools, online learning was a staple long before the pandemic began. Their teachers were used to making lectures engaging, setting proper expectations, and dispersing learning into new formats. The switch to online learning was relatively simple and opened new opportunities for engaging class material and simplifying the busy-ness of education. .
Other schools never anticipated being thrusted into the online learning world whatsoever, leaving their teachers trying to force in-person teaching styles through tiny Zoom windows and figuring out how to captivate their students’ attentions while YouTube and TikTok were now available concurrently with their muted lectures. Not to mention many schools, students, and teachers simply did not have the resources, such as laptops, cameras, internet access, paid online tools, Zoom subscriptions, home offices, and online course hubs, that allowed them to effectively participate in the learning experience in the first place.
There are many intriguing opportunities to explore coming out of this era of online learning. It gives us pause to consider the overarching educational structures by which we have operated within as a nation for decades. It challenges our public understanding, begging many questions of our traditional understanding of education. We may ask: if I could get a better education online from a public school in another state than I can in my home state, why can’t I just Zoom into those classes? Would online education save schools money over time which could be better invested into more learning opportunities?
Does the flexibility of online learning allow students to participate in more extracurricular activities, explore interests and hobbies, and develop more holistically? Additionally, online learning saved countless lives throughout the COVID-19 pandemic because it created a distanced environment for high-risk students and teachers to work alongside their peers without the risk of exposure.
The shadow side of this discussion, however, are the questions that arise from those who will be left behind by the era of online learning. Teachers with a wealth of experience who are unable to adapt to the online formats of education may lose opportunities for employment, leaving them underpaid and students with less experienced instructors. School districts with less funding may not be able to keep up with the rapidly changing, expensive technology needed to service their students and teachers.
Students from lower income families may not have access to devices or internet that allow them to engage with their peers and coursework. Many students in this situation have already been forcibly left behind for an entire year of education because they simply did not have the resources, ability, and choice to engage. This is the largest issue facing the era of online learning.
One single child being forced to sideline their education for a whole year convinces me to say in-person learning is the real winner of the online learning discussion, but I acknowledge the answer is not quite that simple. Online learning simplified, streamlined, and saved many lives this year too. The better way to answer the question of which wins might be to say it depends. For some, online learning opened time with family and friends, gave them flexibility to discover new passions, and alleviated negative social pressures.
It may have even saved their life. For others, online learning posed a barrier to receiving education, increased anxiety and fatigue, and isolated them from their peers. Whether you are still beaming when the teacher asks you to turn on your camera in the morning, or you are grimacing with me, together we can acknowledge the difficulties and learn from our experiences of this past educational year to make a more equitable experience for each student of the future.
US Premium Health Scholarship ' May 31 2021 Winner Essay
Name: Samuel Hodge
